University of Texas Launches Website that Publicizes Spam Sources

By Justin Lee, June 08, 2011

A screenshot of SpamRankings' top 10 sources of spam

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The Center for Research in Economic Commerce (cism.mccombs.utexas.edu) at The University of Texas at Austin recently unveiled a new initiative called SpamRankings (http://www.spamrankings.net/), which is designed to protect Internet users by identifying major havens for spam.

SpamRankings publicizes the names and URLs of  organizations that are major havens for spam in hopes that it will pressure them to improve their security measures to curb future spam.

Poor security measures lead to spam and data theft, where botnets are used to send spam using computers hijacked without the knowledge of their owners.

And although it has yet to be proved whether people consider an organization's spam rankings when choosing a bank, health care provider, SpamRankings is certainly a useful resource to have when qualifying an organization's security measures.

"Nobody wants to do business with a bank or hospital or Internet hosting company that has been hijacked by spammers," said center director Andrew Whinston. "It is an environment in which user data can be stolen or compromised. Outbound spam is a proxy for poor organizational security because outbound spam indicates botnets, botnets indicate vulnerabilities and vulnerabilities indicate susceptibility to other malware, including phishing, DDoS and identity theft."

The researchers are seeking feedback from the ranked organizations. According to the site's current rankings, the top spamming Autonomous Systems for the health care industry are Cedars-Sinai Health Systems in the US, WIN in Belgium and Konkuk University Hospital in Korea.

Whinston was rated this year as the most influential scholar in the information systems field by the h-index, which measures scholarly influence.

The team also includes researchers John S. Quarterman of Quarterman Creations, Professor Serpil Sayin of Koç University and Jouni Reinikainen.

The initial rankings stem from custom blocklist volume data by Composite Blocking List using correlations of groups of IP addresses to organizations by Internet security research firm Team Cymru.

SpamRankings is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation.

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